RE: It's all in the grades.24 Jan 2021 11:55
Once set up, Block caving mining uses conveyors, along long tunnels to take the ore to surface, often such mines then continue to tunnel from this deposit to next from the original tunnel, the set up costs are big, 500m and up, these mines often process 60 to 120,000 tons of ore per day, and are set up to extract the minerals that are present, be it Copper, Au, Ag, Mb, Pb, or whatever, and the different spurs beneath ground can target different minerals dependent on the what minerals the ore mass contains.
But once set up the extraction costs are low compared to other underground mining techniques.
And so clusters can be mined very efficiently too.
DYOR and good luck all.